China can avoid hard landing: Singapore deputy PM

SINGAPORE -- Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said on Monday that China could avoid its economy from a hard landing, suggesting attention should be focused on medium-to-longer term challenges in forms of productivity growth, urbanization and demographic ageing.

"I believe that China will be able to avoid a hard landing in its economy," Tharman said at the opening ceremony of the FutureChina Golbal Forum 2012.

The stimulus recently implemented by China's government is aimed to ease policies by enough to achieve a soft landing without creating the sort of imbalances that came out of the 2008-09 stimulus package, nor another boom in the property markets, he said.

"The calibrate package is designed to achieve a soft landing, but not to achieve very much more about it", since it has smaller size than the stimulus package of 4 trillion yuan ($628 billion) three years ago.

Tharman said the ease measures were selected, ranging from traditional sectors in power and infrastructure of airports, to new sectors like environmental infrastructures. Meanwhile, the financial sector liberalization will provide fair and clean fields for the private sector.

He also suggested an improvement of investment efficiency, as China still needs investment to ensure economic growth and upgrade people's living standards. There are also equalities between rich and poor, migrants and residents in the cities for China to consider, as well as the social security system, Tharman added.

Ma Weihua, executive director, president and chief executive of China Merchants Bank, said at the forum that China did not simply changed its fiscal and monetary policies although its slowdown had been concerned about all throughout the world. It may be painful in China's social and economic reformation, but "we still need to insist the reformation, which cares more about economic structure, quality, benefits and livelihoods."

The two-day forum, with about 400 business leaders, government officials and experts present, will focus on China's society, economy, culture, science and other respects.